RGM

In an article entitled What Can You Do with a Liberal Arts Degree? Plenty!, Rita McGrath is quoted, "Employers are starting to value some of the skills a liberal arts degree teaches, including clear writing and communication skills, intellectual curiosity, and the ability to synthesize and draw patterns from confusing and ambiguous data," says Rita Gunther McGrath, an associate professor at Columbia Business School and author of "The Entrepreneurial Mindset" (Harvard Business School Press, 2000).

• Posted: Monday, January 07, 2008

Jake Anderson, a Harvard School of Business student, has written a paper analyzing the disruptive nature of Google Docs...
"Interestingly, the process of beta testing all of its programs through its general customer base continues today, allowing Google to effectively experiment and continually improve its offerings. In a way, this method of discovery-driven planning has created a culture that supports the efforts of creating a disruption profit engine at Google."

To read the entire paper, click here.

• Posted: Monday, December 17, 2007

Excerpt from HBR Brief: "You are weighing a major strategic venture--a first-time alliance, a new market, an innovative product. Beware: business history is littered with stories about smart companies that hemorrhaged multiple millions from ventures gone bad.

Why such massive losses? Too many firms use conventional planning to manage their ventures, say McGrath and MacMillan. They make predictions about a venture's potential based on their established businesses. And they treat the assumptions underlying those predictions-- "The product will sell itself," "We'll have no competitors"--as facts. By the time they realize a key assumption was flawed, it's too late to stanch the bleeding.

How to avoid this scenario? As your venture unfolds, use a disciplined process to systematically uncover, test, and (if necessary) revise the assumptions behind your venture's plan. You'll expose the make-or-break uncertainties common to ventures. And you'll address those uncertainties at the lowest possible cost--so you don't set your venture on the path to ruin."

Read the entire article here.

• Posted: Monday, November 26, 2007

In an article entitled Recommended Reading: Managing IT for Nontechies, Therese Flaherty, professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and director of the Wharton Small Business Development Center in Philadelphia, recommends Entrepreneural Mindset by Professors Rita McGrath and Ian MacMillan. "Technology changes so fast, and business competition moves fast. [The authors'] 'discovery-driven planning' is a simple and powerful tool for prioritizing and planning the early stages of business improvement and for testing business ideas. It applies well to managing IT." Read the entire WSJ article here.

• Posted: Monday, November 26, 2007

In a Business Review article entitled The Training Chain, Rita McGrath is cited: It might be tempting to shun the cost and uncertainty of outsourcing your training and go completely in-house, McGrath says, but unless you're willing to do everything yourself, it might not be worth it. "The difficulty you have with an in-house system is that unless you're a very large company, it will be tough to keep the faculty busy,..."Off the shelf" implies a supermarket, and there are a wide variety of options for a company to choose from for outsourcing training. Just like grocery shopping, McGrath says, companies should always be careful to read labels before making a selection. "You want to look at the qualities of the people doing the training," she says, adding that qualified trainers are usually certified coaches. When asked which aspect of training is best handled in-house, McGrath says specialized training that's specific to a company and its culture, along with leadership development, are two categories. "What many really good companies do is they have their own executives doing the [leadership] training."

To read the entire article and more input from Rita McGrath, click here.

• Posted: Wednesday, November 14, 2007